


O is for Obscenity

by Janieshi



Series: Alphabet [15]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Gossip, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2019-10-09 18:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janieshi/pseuds/Janieshi
Summary: In which Fuery reveals a hidden talent.





	O is for Obscenity

_Obscenity/əbˈsenədē /noun - the state or quality of being obscene; obscene language, behavior or images; an extremely offensive word or expression._

* * *

 

The first time, Rebecca Catalina walked away certain that she’d only imagined things.

It was one of those hot, still sort of days in East City. The sort that made Rebecca stir crazy and sent her prowling through the halls of Eastern Command on the lookout for interesting gossip – some clandestine fraternization or the dark grumblings of unhappy enlisted men – _anything_ to distract her from the damn heat.

By noon, she’d uncovered an officer with a drinking problem, two pregnancies, an ill-advised flirtation between a married Lieutenant and the naïve Warrant Officer who assumed he was single, and enough evidence to have an incompetent Captain court-martialed for trying to cover up a botched operation from a few weeks earlier which had almost cost two men their lives.

Making a mental note to ensure that certain reports and witness statements found their way to her General’s desk, Catalina turned her steps toward Colonel Mustang’s office, hoping to catch Riza in time to join her for lunch.

She was passing a seldom-used storage room when the string of profanities stopped her in her tracks.

It wasn’t the words themselves that gave her pause. She was in the military, for pity’s sake, indulging in a little obscenity every now and then was practically part of the job description. But that voice – the person doing the vicious swearing …had the sweet-faced Sergeant Major Kain Fuery _really_ just called someone a ‘cock-sucking motherfucker?’

Now this was bound to be interesting.

Rebecca peeked cautiously around the partially-open door, and just as she’d thought, there was Fuery. He was alone, though, surrounded by what looked like several hundred tiny bits and pieces of metal and wire and god only knew what else. Rebecca mentally classed the whole lot as ‘miscellaneous machine bits.’ Fuery himself was elbow-deep into what might once have been a radio, his brow furrowed in concentration.

There was an unpleasant scraping noise that set Rebecca’s teeth on edge.

“Aw, horse kittens!” Fuery cried, yanking his arm free to grab one of the tools lying on the table.

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘foals,’ Kain,” Rebecca teased gently.

“Oh, hello, Second Lieutenant! Forgive me, ma’am, I’d salute, but…” he gave a helpless little gesture to show that his hands were occupied.

“Don’t worry about it, hon, I wouldn’t expect you to anyway,” she winked at him, and then cast a wary eye over the mess spread before him. “Everything, er, going okay in here?”

“Yeah, it’s fine! I’m just trying to fix this piece of cra—er, crud,” he said, glaring hard at the innards of whatever-it-was.

“It’s a…radio, right?”

“Yep, an older one. I picked it up cheap from a secondhand shop; figured I could fix it up and use it as a backup. It’s in great shape, except for a few little things,” he frowned. “And golly, this bit here is a lot harder to get at than I thought it’d be…”

“I see,” Rebecca said, already edging back out of the room. Thank goodness he wasn’t getting all technical and talking about amplifiers, diodes, and frequencies or the like – her eyes glazed over just thinking about the last time he’d waxed poetic about a radio. “Well, I won’t keep you. I was just on my way to look for Hawkeye,” she explained. “I heard your voice, so I thought I’d stop and say hello.”

For some reason, Fuery blushed bright pink.

“Um, the Lieutenant should be down at lunch by now – I saw her just a bit ago,” he volunteered.

“Thanks! See you later!” Rebecca chirped. Fuery responded with an absentminded little wave of whichever tool was in his hand, his attention already back on his radio’s inner workings.

As she headed back in the direction she’d come, Catalina laughed quietly to herself. Clearly she’d misheard, earlier. A kid who says ‘horse kittens’ and ‘golly’ sure as hell wouldn’t be swearing like a Drachman fishwife, right?

She found Hawkeye in the cafeteria with Breda and Havoc. Better still, they’d only just sat down with their food.

“Riza! I’ve been looking all over for you!” Rebecca cried, delighted. “Hi Jean, Heymans.”

“Hello, Catalina,” Hawkeye greeted her with a gentle smile. Havoc and Breda merely nodded their acknowledgement, as their mouths were full.

Rebecca dropped into a chair beside Havoc and helped herself to one of his chips.

“So, how’s tricks?” she asked cheerfully.

Breda huffed out a breath and launched into a story about their latest mission, which had involved dressing Edward Elric as a girl and entering him in a beauty pageant. Between his dry delivery, Havoc’s inability to comment without giggling like a schoolgirl, and Riza’s occasional wry interjections, Rebecca laughed until her sides ached.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry I missed out on all that!” she said breathlessly, wiping tears out of her eyes. “Kain must have been absolutely ecstatic that he didn’t end up in that ball gown.”

“Over the moon,” Breda confirmed with a snort.

“Beauty pageant…oh my lord,” she chuckled. “At least Ed had alchemy to work with, but what on earth would Kain have done about a talent? Does he sing or anything? Dance?”

“I never even thought about that!” Havoc laughed.

“We were more concerned about the corset and wig, actually,” Hawkeye put in. “The idea of needing a talent hadn’t come up yet.”

“Hey, what about rebuilding a radio or something?” Breda suggested, grinning. “They could have just turned him loose on a box of spare parts and let him work his magic.”

“Oh God, no – he’d have been kicked offstage and disqualified for foul language,” Hawkeye said. Rebecca’s ears pricked up.

“Yeah, good point,” Breda snickered.

“Back up – foul language?” Rebecca asked. “ _Kain?”_

“You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but the kid curses like a drunken foundry worker,” Havoc explained.

“Come on, you’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” Catalina demanded.

“I shit you not. Right, guys?” Havoc looked around at his teammates, whose amusement was clear.

“Hand to god,” Breda said, grinning.

“Swears like a Cretan cavalry officer,” Hawkeye confirmed with a small nod for emphasis.  Catalina raised her eyebrows.

“We _are_ all talking about the same person, right? Sergeant Major Kain Fuery? Sweet, kinda geeky-looking kid who says things like ‘gee whiz’ and ‘golly’ every time I see him?”

Hawkeye chuckled.

“I didn’t believe it at first, either,” she assured her friend.

“So maybe I _wasn’t_ imagining things,” she said doubtfully. “Earlier, I thought I heard someone curse, but then Fuery was all by himself, and I thought no WAY it could have been him…”

“It’s funny, but he never does it when he knows people can _hear_ him – you’d only know he has the foulest mouth in East City if you’d caught him off guard,” Havoc supplied. “And it’s only ever when he’s tinkering with something – an old comm unit or one of the radios or whatever.”

“He gets so flustered when you catch him at it, too,” Breda added.

“Ha! You shoulda seen his face the first time the Lieutenant overheard him!” Havoc laughed. “I thought he was gonna piss himself, he was so damn scared.”

“What did he think you were going to do, put him in front of the firing squad over a few swear words?” Rebecca wanted to know, turning to Hawkeye.

“Well…”

“A _few_ swear words?” Havoc interrupted incredulously. “You must have caught him on an off day today, Becca.”

“It’s **RE** becca, you ass,” she hissed under her breath. Only her mother and Riza were allowed to use that hateful nickname. (And General Grumman too, but only because he outranked her.)

Undeterred, Havoc grinned at her and offered her the apple from his tray. She snatched it out of his hand and contemplated shoving it down his throat for a few seconds, but hunger won out. She glared daggers at him as her teeth sank into the crisp fruit, but Havoc’s grin only widened. Daintily licking juice off her thumb and pretending not to notice the way Havoc’s gaze turned faintly predatory, Catalina returned her attention to the conversation at hand.

“Seriously, Fuery has the filthiest mouth I’ve ever heard,” Breda was saying.

“Inventive, too,” Hawkeye put in. “I walked in on him in the middle of a particularly venomous rant,” she added when Rebecca met her eyes. “I wouldn’t care to repeat even half of what he said.”

Rebecca’s eyebrows shot up. Riza didn’t exactly have a foul mouth, but she never shied away from profanity when the occasion called for it. And she was certainly never _embarrassed_ by it.

“Okay, I feel like I’ve missed out on some sort of rite of passage, here,” she said. Hawkeye glanced over at the wall clock.

“It’s not too late to fix that,” she said, rising. “Come with me. _Quietly_.”

Abandoning the remainder of her apple, Rebecca jumped up to follow her friend. Breda and Havoc exchanged a glance, pushed back their trays and hurried after the two women.

Hawkeye led the way to the small storage room where Rebecca had last seen Fuery. She paused while they were still half a corridor away and put a warning finger to her lips. The others nodded, determined, and crept along after her as silently as they were able.

And once again, a string of obscenities spilled out of the partially open door, interspersed with the sound of metal whacking on metal.

“You horse-fucking, cock-sucking, dickless son of a WHORE!” Fuery snarled. “Motherfucking assho—ow, _SHIT_!! That fucking hurt, goddammit! Owww!”

Rebecca had to clap a hand over her mouth to prevent an outburst of slightly hysterical laughter. Riza wrinkled her nose and shrugged helplessly.

Havoc and Breda exchanged a look and a nod. Havoc tapped Rebecca’s shoulder and mouthed _“watch this.”_ He backed up several paces, silently. Meanwhile, Fuery spat out a particularly nasty oath, punctuated with a loud clang. Rebecca assumed he’d thrown a tool at the wall.

Behind them, Havoc stopped backing up and walked towards them again, this time not bothering to move quietly.

“Cold-hearted little bitch,” Fuery growled. There was a slight pause as the sound of Havoc’s boots clumping down the hall registered. And then: “Rusty hunk of junk. I oughta throw you back in the scrap heap. Ouch! Aw, crackers, not again! Darn it!”

Havoc made a show of passing by the open door and clomping his way down the hall – and back out of earshot. Confused, Rebecca turned to Riza, who held up a hand to signal her to wait. Sure enough, as soon as the sound of Havoc’s footfalls died away, Fuery spoke again.

“Bloody, buggering cunt. Enough of this fuckery, you hear me? WORK, damn you! Shit-licking spawn of a diseased harlot,” he muttered.

Rebecca had always admired the way her friend was able to move in near total silence when she put her mind to it, and never more so than now. Before Fuery had even finished his last sentence, Hawkeye had traversed the remaining dozen or so feet to the storage room and thrown the door wide open, all without making a sound.

“That was a rather colorful one, Sergeant,” she said suddenly. Fuery let out a startled yelp.

“Ma’am! I-I didn’t hear you coming!”

“Yes, that much was fairly obvious,” she replied, amused.

“Aw, peanut butter,” he sighed. “I was doing it again, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, you were. Remind me, Sergeant Major, what was our arrangement?”

The all-too-innocent tone of her voice sent a chill down even Rebecca’s spine. She and Breda inched slightly closer to each other. Havoc, who was in the process of creeping quietly back to them, actually shivered.

“Our…? Oh,” Fuery gulped audibly. “That-that if you caught me using that sort of filthy language in your hearing again - especially a certain, very deeply offensive word beginning with a c…” here Fuery paused in his dutiful recitation to risk a glance at his Lieutenant, who was slowly nodding.  “Um, in that event, then I’m to treat you and any other, er, ‘innocent bystanders’ who I might’ve corrupted with such ‘wanton profanity’ to drinks…er, to drinks at the Four Roses,” he finished, ducking his head a little in shame.

“Very good, Sergeant. We’ll meet you there at nineteen hundred hours, then.”

“W-we, ma’am?” Fuery stammered, turning a brilliant shade of crimson. As one, Breda, Catalina and Havoc materialized in the doorway behind Hawkeye, none bothering to hide their glee. 

“Constant vigilance, Sergeant,” Hawkeye said sweetly. “Suppose a general had been passing by, rather than a handful of your teammates? If a higher ranking officer happened to take offence, you might have been hauled in front of a disciplinary committee to answer for Conduct Unbecoming an Officer.”

Breda and Havoc guffawed and thumped poor Fuery’s back as the younger man buried his red face in his hands. Rebecca leaned in close to her friend.

“You, madam, are truly diabolical,” she murmured into Riza’s ear. Riza’s lips curved into a sly smile.

“It’s important to be aware of one’s surroundings at all times, don’t you agree?”

“Aw, cat feathers,” sighed Fuery.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to StormingMyCastle, who requested something lighthearted about Fuery getting worked up and occasionally using profane language, and to Lex Asriel, who suggested the word 'Oath.'


End file.
